Guilty Party

The last time I saw Guilty Party, I was unimpressed. Initially, it seemed like a minigame collection dressed up in the trenchcoat of the detective genre. All you had to do was play a few minigames and deduce the identity of the suspect based on clues and interviews. Back then, the cooperative mode made the game seem bland.

My opinions changed slightly after I was introduced to Guilty Party’s competitive play. The whole system works so much better when you’re competing against someone to solve a crime. Again, I picked my detective (They all function the same as avatars.) and Jon Krussell, senior producer at Wideload Games, chose his and we went off to solve a theft on the boat.

I’ve always wanted to go to one of those murder mystery dinners. You know the ones. Part theater, part alternate reality game, the premise of the experience is that patrons have dinner in which a crime happens. Instead of panicking and calling the police, the diners have to gather clues, watch a performance with a cast of suspects and try to solve the whodunnit all by the time dessert is served.

I’m not sure why I’d want to do it except that maybe I want to live out the Mystery Weekend episode from Saved by the Bell or maybe lately I’ve been playing too much Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth. Wherever the urge came from, I’ll finally have a chance to try this out at my own home if I can get my cooking skills up to snuff. Two upcoming video games are trying to capture the entertainment of the murder-mystery and funnel it into a party game.

In one corner, we have Guilty Party, a new Disney property for the Wii that’s produced by Wideload Games. The other title is Blue Toad Murder Files by Relentless Software, the makers of Buzz! franchise. The two have some similarities. Both feature cartoonish sleuths. Both try to figure out the culprits using a series of minigames. But it’s the appraoch that separates the competing games.